Marketing Moments

Being There for Your Customers

Being There for Your Customers

Ever been out walking, and you’ve felt a little peckish, and up ahead you see a convenience store where you know you can buy a snack for yourself. That’s why they call them convenience stores. They have predicted how you might feel, and where you might feel that, and voila there they are. Of course they are there whether you are there or not, but they are expecting you.

If you don’t have a retail business, it’s just as important that you are there when your customers have a hunger for your product or services. While you can never really be sure when your customers become ‘hungry’, you can give gentle reminders that you can provide those services when they need them, even if they’re full right now.

So called Top of Mind marketing is making sure that whenever a customer in your marketplace needs your services, that they think of you first.

Advertising is obviously one way to do this, but this needs to be in media where your customers are. With online marketing, this has never been easier. Whether it’s Google, Facebook or another platform, you can specify demographic and location details, but it’s not enough to know your customers’ age, gender and locality. You also need to know their interests. Google helps you do this when you identify keywords on which they are likely to be searching eg Electricians in Eaglemont. If you know what websites they might visit or groups they belong to, both Google and Facebook can help you narrow this down because they spy on your customers on your behalf. This is important because the more precise your profiling, the less you’ll pay to find your perfect customers, reducing the cost per sale.

For people with whom you already have a relationship, newsletters with relevant information for your customers is a way of staying top of mind until they are ready. Posting on social media is also an easy way of staying in touch, as long as what you are posting is of interest to customers, and not just what you had for lunch. You can congratulate people when you are notified by LinkedIn of some anniversary or job change, but make sure you don’t just use the default response, say something that will stand out from most people who do.

The point is to have a plan to be there for new customers and stay in touch with old ones because you will never know when that hunger occurs for them unless you do.